What we can learn from BOA2 meta

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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BOA 2 was played on march patch. Many balance changes have been done after that but we have general idea of current meta.

  1. Archer line is too strong-why?
    a. They don’t cost food which help in booming and sometimes result in fast imperial even.
    b. They can be easily massed as they cost less and many civ have bonus for archers.
    c. Their upgrade costs are too less.
    d. When compared to cav archer they don’t require stable, bloodlines, husbandry and parthian to be effective. CA also has fire delay and more costly than archer.

My suggestion- make fletching line 50% costly and reduce CA fire delay to 6 or 7 (currently 10)

  1. Militia line and infantry UU (except goths)
    a. No mobility
    b. Die to archer, knights and everything else
    c. Costly on food in early game (before booming)

My suggestion-Give scale mail +1/+2 and plate mail +1/+1 (wild I know). Make them 10% faster. Reduce their cost.

  1. Camel line- They are great unit but we still see them very less (except indians). Berbers, malians, saracens, byz all have very good bonuses but all of them are better at something else thats why we don’t see them often.

My suggestion- Make their anti cav bonus to +12/+24/+24 currently +9/+18/+18 for camel/heavy camel/ imp camel

For 20yrs same meta of archer flank and knight pocket is being followed. For a change make other units viable.
Let’s hear your suggestions

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Why do we want change, just for the sake of change? (Also e.g. multiple games were won by Malian Camels on Canyon Lake).

I dont understand how those changes help the gameplay as a whole? (Altough reducing the CA fire delay somewhat is sth you can discuss about).

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Aoe 2 just dont revolve around 2-3 units. There are whole lot of other viable units-CA, camels, BE, steppe lancer, militia line and lots of UU. Game becomes stale after watching 2 units every game. I agree BOA offered more variety since they are not generic maps but take arabia for reference and not other maps.

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The thing is Ranged + Melee combo simply is stronger than 2 melee options. So in the end infantry would replace knights in those compositions. But to achieve that you basically have to buff infantry so far, that they are knights “clone”. And then again you dont help the gameplay, you just replaced knights with infantry.

More generally speaken: There is always an optimal composition and people will go for that composition. If it wouldnt be Crossbow + Knights, but e.g. CA + Camel, you would only see CA + Camel. That would not improve the gameplay it would just be other units.

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the thing is team games by nature reduce the value of trash units. That said across the entire tournament I saw a heck of a lot of variety.

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I saw turks winning, Mamelukes carrying, and champions being the core unit of a team. This tournament teached us that eveey unit has its own situation to shine (except Steppe lancers). But obviously, some units are more common to see than others.

Than being said, I would give a little something to sarracens camels

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Camels are already pretty good versus cavalry. I never understand when people want to buff an already pretty strong side of an overall weak unit (to be clear I don’t think camels are weak)

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As Pathing improves, Archer strength will go down.

on the other hand you need more workers on wood and gold then if you were just going scouts into a castle age. this means your overall food eco is lower then someone who is going scouts into knights.

and many civs have bonuses that affect knights and cavalry, what’s your point?

mixed bag here. fletching is the only feudal upgrade to cost gold.
furthermore, ballistics + thumb ring is 300 food, 550 wood, and 175g and requires the building of a university for another 200 wood. also arb is more expensive then cavalier.
meanwhile bloodlines + husbandry only require a stable and cost 300 food and 100 gold.
but yes, overall the BS upgrades are more expensive, and of course, paladin exists.

on the other hand they generally have more health, damage, mobility, and armor then archers do. more investment pays off.

i agree that the mobility of the swordsman line prevents them from being a standard army comp unit, however they do have quite effective niche like killing trash, malay trash swords, malian swords who have extra pierce, and baghains burgundians swordsman.

i mean that’s kind of the point. they aren’t intended to beat archers or knights. archers beat pikes who beat knights who beat archers.

supplies exists for that purpose. i do feel supplies is a little too pricey though.

they literally already are very cost effective against knights as is. even at basic camel.
10 vs 10 camels beat knights with 4 camels remaining. total investment into those armies?
600 food and 750 gold for knights
550 food and 600 gold for camels
and the camels train 80 seconds faster cumulative.
not only that, but remember that those 4 camels survived, meaning you lost only 330 food and 360 gold to take out almost double that in food and over double that in gold.
camels do not need to hard counter the knight line any harder then they do.

i don’t think the meta needs much in the way of unit changes (outside of finding a way for the SL to contribute). I do think we need some civ changes. but i’ve already discussed those in other threads.

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You don’t mean that. Maybe you haven’t watched BOA then. FI can be done only by archer player.

and I didn’t talk about knights anywhere did I?

too less compared to infantry not cav

and still we didn’t see them maybe once every 20 games. Not by mongol or tatar or huns even.

Do u know water triangle-fire ship, demo ship and war galley. Same triangle is followed on land archers-knights and swordsmen. They fixed water triangle not land one. They have been buffing militia line over the yrs still they suck. I want them to go out of their way to buff them to see how meta develops and nerf later if too strong.

Knights exists in every team game then we should see more camels. But we don’t. Why? cuz they are bad at everything else.

I don’t understand you quite. Either u are saying they are bad in which case they need buff or they are good in which case pros are stupid for not using them.

I am not talking about civs. But did we see any infantry UU? and exactly we saw champions but where are long swordsmen?
They rarer the unit the stronger it should be thats why UUs are stronger and camels are available to half the civ why don’t we see them more? Maybe they should start removing techs and units which are not intended for that civ like indians knights, malay chain boarding, burmese leather archer armor, spanish and bulgairans xbows and give some identity to the civs but not like one trick pony like goths.

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actually the pocket player was most often the first player to imp. rarely was a flanking archer player the first to imp, and only when they were not actually involved in the ongoing fights. which ofcourse means they aren’t worrying about replacing lost units, and can instead focus on adjusting their eco to tech.

my point was that just because lots of civs have bonuses that affect archers doesn’t mean that makes archers op.

yeah well infantry is incredibly niche.

we honestly didn’t see a lot of them this tournament period. frankly they are far better 1v1 civs then team game civs.

except no. swordsman aren’t part of the land triangle. pikes are. if swordsman were intended to be part of the land triangle they would have bonus against cavalry, as it would be the only way to make them cost effective. please show me where this bonus exists.
swordsman line has literally never been part of the land triangle. not even back in age of kings.

except against trash, goths, eagles.

because only 12 civs have camels.
of those, only 2 are actual “pocket” civs. Persians and Indians.

the whole point of team play is that the outside players go ranged units for harassment and protection while the pocket player gets to boom.

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Skirms would like to disagree with you

But they cost gold and gold is way harder to collect than food.

Yet, Archer can be easily killed by Cav, yet CA can kill even cav with good micro.

TK too? TK dies to archer but shines in Melee combat.
Also, why infantry can’t die by archers?
Also, spear-line is considered a counter to knights.

Yet, is used to delay opponent and cause damage to their eco. MAA is not gonna be the main army, it’s not designed for that

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Man counter argument is so easy to make but tell me why aren’t other units apart from knights and archers are used. Something is definitely wrong. UU are maybe far fetched but camels (except indians, CA, BE (except khmer), steppe lancer, long swordsmen when do we see them in pros TG? Gimme concrete reason

Pikes are part of land triangle of 3 trash- spear, skir and scout cav. Long sword are part of knights, xbows and milita line triangle.

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Camels + Camel Archers are quite a good composition for Berbers (that is, you need a decent eco and trade)
Malay BE is cheaper and quite effective in mass

Camels? Cav Archers? Steppe Lancers?

Cav Archers for Magyars and Turks are a really decent choice.

Cav Archers for Mongols (if we don’t count go for Mangudai) is decent

Heck, Hunnic cav archers are good too

So, no

You could argue that the militia-line isn’t always a good choice for most infantry civs (except Malay and Goths, that is) Still, nothing is wrong with them

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I don’t think such triangle really exists outside of water and trash, making milita line anti cav is a poor idea

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As stated above, there is always a best composition. So people go for that composition. The fact that this tournament had many open Maps, makes the standard crossbow-Knight even stronger.

If you change the balance, so that another composition is the best, suddenly you will see mostly that composition. But in the end in a TG people will go for the best composition.
Example: Not Socotra: People went monks and siege there every game. Because it was the best thing to do given the map.

Also on more closed maps there would indeed be more unit variety since arbalest fall off in Mid Imperial. But this tournament hardly got past mid imperial.

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So u want to say archer+knights is best composition for all 35 civs. Where is diversity then? Having civ bonuses doesn’t matter at all? The mere fact that there are 2 units in best composition for every civ makes it OP.

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we literally saw almost every unit used at one point or another.

clearly it does, otherwise some civs wouldn’t be better then others in certain situations.

the best composition is subjective based on the game situation. the reason archers and knights are used is because they are fairly good all around units that cover each others weaknesses.

and archers will frankly get worse as pathing gets better in DE.

If you nerf the Knight and the Crossbow in order to bring “Diversity” to the game, you will literally only replace them with a new “knight and crossbow”.
yeah it will be different units on top, but that is it. honestly it might not even be two units. it might just become cav archers.

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please show me where swordsman have attack bonus against knights.
no such bonus exists. not even back in age of kings days was this the case.

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well for one, camels are only available to 12 civs.
of those, only 2 are actually viable “Pocket” civs.

niche raider and in need of love. we saw it all the time at launch. and its also only available to 3 civs. that kind of keeps it from seeing use often because its only available to roughly 1 out of every 12 civs in the game.

the militia line was always a trash killer. that was its role. it also does well against Huskarls, Eagles, and depending on the civ, Bulgarians, Malians, and Malay all have reason to use them often do to various civ bonuses.
why don’t you see them in team games? how often do you see trash in team games, where gold is plentiful? very rarely. eagles? you usually got a pocket knights civ to cover the eagles so no need to make eagles, just make archers instead.

if you don’t like the team game meta, that is fine, but it doesn’t mean that Knights and Crossbows are Overpowered.

some units are better in some situations over others.
in a 1v1 you see much more trash then you do in team games.
in team games you see more elephants then you do in 1v1.

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It does not always mean that it has to have attack bonus. There is something called cost effective trade.

Chinese camels are exactly same as persians camel, then why is persian pocket better than chinese. Simple chinese has good archers and persians don’t. Archers are deciding factor for a civ to be played as flank.

here u are talking about two handed and champions. I asked u why long sword not used.

  1. Even in 1v1 hussar raiding is better than making champion and u always have time to prepare for counter champions which are too many.
  2. Longsword is castle age unit and who makes trash in castle age even in 1v1. What u said may apply to champions not longswords.
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